


447. guilt

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [344]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 13:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11149857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “You know it should have been us,” Helena says, now that they are alone, now that there is no one to tell them to be safe –we’ve got it, Sarah, we can finally stand up on our own. Helena your babies need you. This time we’ve got it. This time the two of you can sit down and be safe, you’ve done so much, you’ve been so brave, you can rest now.





	447. guilt

When it’s happening on a screen, it feels so very far away. Helena watches Sarah gnawing on her fingernail, and then goes back to watching the screen. Cosima is so small. She doesn’t even look real, as she runs, Cosima with the files and Delphine with the gun and Helena and Sarah sitting here in this room with a laptop computer and a baby monitor and three of their children asleep in the room next door. Sarah is frantic with motion, as Cosima and Delphine just-keep-running.

“Shit,” Sarah says, and that’s when Helena realizes Sarah has been biting on her hangnail, so hard that there’s blood all the way down her thumb. Helena agrees: with the _shit_ , with the blood. She hugs her arms back around her belly and keeps watching.

“You know it should have been us,” she says, now that they are alone, now that there is no one to tell them to be safe – _we’ve got it, Sarah, we can finally stand up on our own. Helena your babies need you. This time we’ve got it. This time the two of you can sit down and be safe, you’ve done so much, you’ve been so brave, you can rest now._

But MK gave them the feed. So.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, frantic, “yeah, yeah, I know. They’re gonna get hurt. Shit, I should’ve—”

“We,” Helena says.

Sarah ignores her. “Should’ve argued against it,” she says. “This is _my shit_ , this is always my—”

“Why can’t I do it,” Helena says. “Doctor Delphine has only fired a gun once, she said, she told me. I could run and I could shoot and I would not even be afraid of it, I could keep Cosima safe.”

“Yeah, but your babies,” Sarah says, watching the monitor, not looking at Helena at all. Helena is a bitten hangnail; she reaches out and slams the laptop shut. Sarah jumps backwards, electric motion, and then she turns and looks at Helena.

“You sound like them,” Helena says. “And I would sound like them when I say that you have been very brave for a long time, and maybe it is time for somebody else to be brave now. But we aren’t them. We know. _We_ know.”

Sarah: motion blur. Helena keeps seeing it, how much Sarah is moving, can’t _stop_ seeing it, can’t let Sarah be anything else but the way her leg is jumping and the way her fingers are twisting and the way Helena can’t even keep her eyes entirely on Sarah. How much she _jumps_.

“I know—” Sarah says, and she ducks her head down, and she scratches fingers desperately at her scalp. “God, Helena, I know they just want m—us to be safe, I want you to be safe so bloody bad, but this is what I do, this is – it’s my job, I have to—”

“They want us to be safe,” Helena says to the dark echo room. “But they made us into this first. They gave you a sword and they gave me a shield and now they are taking them away from us and telling us to sit down and be quiet. Sarah if they die how is it not our fault.” Her breath aches in her throat, the guilt of it, it’s on her shoulders, she should be there. Her life isn’t her life; it belongs to all of them. They can use her however they want. She wishes they would. She wishes she could lock Sarah in this room and go out there on her own and save them, and she can tell next to her Sarah is wishing the exact same thing.

“It’s not your fault,” Sarah says, and her hand is on Helena’s shoulder. “You didn’t make this plan, yeah? You—”

“It’s not your fault,” Helena says, and reaches out and puts her hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “You were never supposed to die for them.” Her smile shatters the corner of her mouth, crooked. “I can be your mirror for as long as you want, Sarah. Everything you say to me I can reflect back to you.”

Sarah drops her hand from Helena’s shoulder. (Helena does too.) She puts her hand on the laptop, to open it back up, then takes her hand away and leaves them both in the dark again. “You know,” she says, almost a question.

“I know.”

“You feel it,” Sarah says, stubbornly not looking at Helena. “That your life’s not shit, unless it’s theirs.”

“Yes,” Helena says. “I feel it.”

Sarah breathes. Sarah’s eyes move, but they don’t move towards Helena. “Do you think that’s ever gonna stop,” she says.

“A sword can cut steak,” Helena says, “and a shield can be a plate to hold it on. But.”

“What happens if it doesn’t work,” Sarah whispers.

Helena bites her lip. “We go in,” she says. “We save them. Again. We fix it, the best that we can, and they are still broken, but they love us. And they need us. And the next time they are scared they will pray for us.”

“What happens if it does work.”

“They will be happy,” Helena says, “and we will win, and you will learn to cut steak.”

Sarah – with effort – flattens her hand on the table. The room is dark; the sound of Kira’s breathing, of Helena’s babies’ breathing, filters through the monitor like tides. “Just the two of us here,” Sarah says.

“Yes.”

“So which one do you want.”

“You already know,” Helena says.

“Helena,” Sarah says.

“Yes.”

“That’s what I want too.”

“I know,” Helena says. “I know.”

Sarah looks at her hand, flat-open-empty, and then shoves herself out of her chair and paces pointless loops around the empty room. “God,” she says, laughing the word into three syllables. “What a shitty thing to want. What _shit_.” She comes back around, kicks her chair, watches it skitter a few inches across the floor. She goes back to pacing. “I want them to be alright. I want – I want them to be alright.”

“So if I open up the laptop,” Helena says, “and Cosima and Delphine are on the boat, and they are kissing, and they have the file, and no one is hurt, that will be okay with you.”

Sarah: a weight, plummeting into a chair. “Don’t open it.”

“I wasn’t,” Helena says. “But. I wanted to know.”

“Me too,” Sarah says. “I want to know.” She puts her hands over her legs, watches them fold and unfold. Then she looks at Helena. “This isn’t,” she says. “This – I’m not – forget about me for a second, yeah? I just wanted to say sorry. That we did this to you. That we said you had to – charge in with a bloody gun all the time.”

“You didn’t do this to me,” Helena says quietly. She tilts her head to the side. “I am sorry that they did it to you.”

“Not the same,” Sarah says.

“No,” Helena says. “I know. They love you.”

“Yeah.”

“That makes it harder, I think. To walk away from it.”

Sarah is quiet. “Yeah,” she says, eventually. Both of them watch her feet drum on the floor. “When this is over,” she says, “if it’s over, if I – open the bloody laptop and it’s over, then we’re gonna have to learn to walk away from it.”

The laptop on the table is suddenly an awful thing, like a cage to walk in or out of. “I think so yes,” Helena says.

“They don’t even know we’re walking,” Sarah says quietly. “That we’re – that I’m gonna spend the rest of my bloody life jumping at shadows.” She stops. “Jumping bloody towards bloody shadows.”

“Better that way,” Helena says. “Nobody wants to think that they made someone into something else, even if they didn’t do it on purpose. Even if we wanted to be this for them.” She folds her hands together. “Sarah I wanted it. Sarah I still want it. If you jump towards shadows I will be there also, right behind you leaping.”

“That’s what I was gonna say,” Sarah says. She looks at Helena, full-on. “If this ends. Could we do this shit together? Maybe? Just – figuring out how to be…” she flips her hand around, vague, “whatever the hell we are that isn’t this.”

“Always,” Helena says. “If you hold my hands I will hold yours. That way my hands can’t hold knives, and also my hands can hold your hands down so they can’t lead you anywhere away.”

Sarah’s hand reaches out and grabs her hand. It’s sweaty and slippery and does not have any calluses on it from guns. Helena squeezes it, so hard the blood in both of them might stop pumping. Might stop making them into the things that they are, over and over again.

“Don’t go,” Sarah says.

“I will not go,” Helena says.

“Thank you,” Sarah says. With the hand that isn’t holding Helena’s hand, she reaches over and opens up the laptop again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! Oh, god, there's only one day left!


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